REVIEW: Wonka Ice Cream

I recently watched a biography about Ben & Jerry’s on Netflix while taste testing the flavors from the new Wonka Ice Cream line. Ever since then, I’ve been having a recurring nightmare that goes something like this:

NO, BEN!

NO, JERRY!

I’M SORRY!

I won’t cheat on you two ever again! Please don’t give me concrete shoes and turn me into Phish Food. No, Ben. I can’t take anymore whipping of my Cinnamon Buns. Jerry? What are you doing with that knife? No! Not the Banana Split! Not the Banana Split, Jerry! No more Bonnaroo Buzz, Ben. My nipples can’t take any more. Please, I don’t want anymore Schweddy Balls from another Chubby Hubby sitting on my chest. I can’t breathe. Please, can’t you Imagine Whirled Peace?

Wonka’s new ice cream line comes in seven flavors: Chocolate Snowflakes, Kerfuffle Truffle, Chipperberry Swirl, Chocolate Chipper Chip, Chocolate Mintropolis, Caramel Nut Kadoozle, and Kernelpuff Caramelstuff. And I’m going to review all seven of them right now in an order that does not follow the previous sentence.

Kerfuffle Truffle

If you were jealous of Augustus Gloop when he fell into the chocolate river, but not when he got sucked through a pipe, you can experience a near drowning by chocolate with Wonka’s Kerfuffle Truffle Ice Cream, which is made up of chocolate ice cream with chocolate truffles and fudge swirls. This was my least favorite of the seven flavors, but not because it tasted like what I imagine somekind of gloop tastes like or anything like that.

I hoped the three parts of the ice cream would create a flavor kerfuffle, but the firm chocolate truffles and almost pudding-like fudge swirl didn’t make the ice cream taste anything more than a regular chocolate ice cream. They did give the ice cream a variety of textures and it’s good for a chocolate ice cream, but because it doesn’t stray from that, it’s a little disappointing. Not very Wonka.

Chocolate Snowflakes

Much like Kerfuffle Truffle, Chocolate Snowflake is good, but it’s not a very creative flavor. Sure, the combination of vanilla ice cream with “melt in your mouth” chocolate flakes might have you thinking of something magical, but it’s just a chocolate chip ice cream. Yes, there was melting in my mouth, but it was the vanilla ice cream that did most of the melting, which it should’ve been since it’s heat-hating ice cream. The chocolate flakes do melt away, but it happens much later after the ice cream does. Perhaps, they should’ve called the ice cream “Chocolate Hail.” The vanilla ice cream is bright white, which makes it easier for the chocolate flakes stand out, and there are a lot of chocolate flakes. But, again, it’s a simple flavor.

Chocolate Mintropolis

When I bite into one of the mini peppermint patties in the Wonka Chocolate Mintropolis Ice Cream, I get the sensation of wishing it had a stronger mintiness that makes me get the sensation of my mouth feeling like it’s the lobby of the Sorrisniva Igloo Hotel in Alta, Norway. Chocolate Mintropolis also has chocolate mint cookie chunks swimming in its chocolate ice cream, but the ice cream as a whole is not as minty as I would’ve liked.

However, it’s a pleasurable ice cream with four different textures: the chocolate ice cream’s creaminess, the mini peppermint patty’s firmness, the chewiness of some of the chocolate mint cookie pieces, and the crunchiness of the other cookie chunks. The crunchiness surprised me because when I first started eating the ice cream, all I got were chewy cookies, but then I got a spoonful with a crunch, and then another. That surprise crunch is kind of Wonka-like, don’t you think?

There’s enough mini peppermint patties and chocolate mint cookies to ensure you have a bit of either in every spoonful. While Chocolate Mintropolis isn’t as minty as I hoped, I do think it’s a couple steps above Kerfuffle Truffle.

Chipperberry Swirl

You know how I complained about how Chocolate Snowflake was a simple flavor? Well, Chipperberry Swirl pretty much takes the vanilla ice cream and chocolate in Chocolate Snowflake and makes it better with the addition of black raspberry ice cream. It’s the only flavor with any fruit flavor. The fruity ice cream is a little tangy, which makes Chipperberry Swirl taste like a frozen yogurt, but its nutrition facts and ingredients list assures me that it isn’t. The raspberry ice cream blends well with the chocolate chips, which there were a lot of.

Oh, I should mention the chocolate chips aren’t like the chocolate chips you’d find in cookies, they’re chips of chocolate, like the chips of ice one would find scattered around an ice sculpture in the lobby of the Sorrisniva Igloo Hotel in Alta, Norway. Much like the other flavors, there were a lot of add-ins in Chipperberry Swirl. There are so many chocolate chips that if you don’t get some as you scoop some out, consider yourself the worst scooper ever. But you’ll have many opportunities to practice your scooping because this is a hard flavor to put down.

Caramel Nut Kadoozle

Wonka’s Caramel Nut Kadoozle contains a caboodle of nuts. Within its caramel ice cream there are walnut caramel swirls and pieces of mixed nut brittle which have peanuts, almonds, walnuts, cashews, and pecans. If you love caramel as much as I love the feel of baby oil on skin, you’ll enjoy the one-two punch of the caramel ice cream and walnut caramel swirls. The gooey swirls are sweet, but they’re also a little nutty and salty, which also are the red flags I look for when out on first dates.

What makes this ice cream extraordinary is the mixed nut brittle, which provides not only a crunchy texture, but also a bit of mystery with every chunk. With each piece, I wasn’t sure what nutty flavor I’d get after biting into it. It could be mostly peanuts, or cashews, or walnuts, or any combination of the five nuts. Your molars are the key to each mystery mixed nut brittle chunk.

Kernelpuff Caramelstuff

I became sad when I looked through Kernelpuff Caramelstuff’s ingredient list and didn’t see popped popcorn kernels. I’ve had ice creams with bits of cakes, cookies, pretzels, and potato chips, but I’ve always wanted to experience an ice cream with popcorn mixed in. My ice cream/popcorn fantasy remains a fantasy because instead of popcorn, Kernelpuff Caramelstuff has bits of puffed millet. Here’s a Wikipedia link in case you’re like me and thought a millet was what one calls a mullet when it’s on a child younger than six years old.

Along with the puffed millet, Kernelpuff Caramelstuff is also made up of caramel ice cream, pecan pralines and salted caramel swirls. The puffed millet doesn’t really add any flavor, but their texture is similar to those tiny bits of popcorn you’d find at the bottom of the microwaveable popcorn bag or the tub of movie theater popcorn. It adds a different mouthfeel with the creamy ice cream, gooey caramel, and crunchy pecan pralines. The pecan pralines are divine; they’re more sweet than nutty, which helps this ice cream flavor differentiate itself from the nuttier Caramel Nut Kadoozle.

Chocolate Chipper Chip

Finally, there’s Chocolate Chipper Chip, which turns me into the demanding Veruca Salt because the combination of vanilla ice cream with chocolate and potato chips bark pieces makes me want to sing “I Want It Now.” The flavor is similar to Ben & Jerry’s Late Night Snack, except it lacks a caramel swirl and the potato chips don’t come in fudge covered potato chip ball form. But it doesn’t need the caramel swirl because the sweet and slightly salty combination works well with this ice cream.

Like the other Wonka Ice Cream flavors, there are a lot of add-ins in the 14-ounce container of Chocolate Chipper Chip. Every spoonful had a bit of the chocolate and potato chip bark. The potato chips taste like regular Lay’s potato chips, but 50 percent of the time it was hard to detect that flavor through the chocolate. I also noticed a lack of potato chip crunch as I scooped my way through the ice cream, which was extremely disappointing and made me think Ben & Jerry’s Late Night Snack got it right with their fudge covered potato chip balls. Despite these issues, Chocolate Chipper Chip is my favorite of the seven Wonka Ice Cream flavors, but not by much over Kernelpuff Caramelstuff and Caramel Nut Kadoozle.

You can’t go wrong with any of the Wonka Ice Cream flavors. There are a few boring flavors, but none of them are bad. As I mentioned throughout this review, each container of ice cream has a lot of add-ins and they’re in easy scoopable pieces. And that’s what stands out with these Wonka Ice Cream flavors. There have been several Ben & Jerry’s flavors I’ve tried that have had huge, hard pieces of brownies or toffee bars that forced me to stab into the pint of ice cream with my spoon like I’m getting revenge for making me chubby in order to break down those pieces into smaller chunks. That’s a nightmare I don’t like to face when I’m trying to enjoy some ice cream.

(Disclaimer: I received samples of Wonka Ice Cream for free in order to write this review. Too bad I’m not going through a break up right now, because if I was, the fat from the seven containers of ice cream in my freezer would fill the broken parts of my heart.)

That was my “crack” for a while – Heston’s yeah?Thing is – it isnt as creamy as you’d hope, and it had ice crystals in it! I ended up loving Ben & Jerry’s Vermonster so much more, owing to its creaminess and REAL pecans

Ice cream has become so irritating. There’s no innovation at all, it’s all me-too me-too. Oh you make black raspberry? then I gotta make black raspberry too. The only ingredient here even MILDLY innovative is the millet. Everything else can already be found in a different package. SO BORING.

If you want a good example of how corporate consolidation destroys innovation – of how taking what used to be 5 or 6 companies and distilling them down to two reduces choices for consumers, with packaging being different to fool everyone – then the ice cream industry is it. Bummer, man.

It’s a Nestle product, which as you know, is the parent company of Dreyer’s and Haagen Dazs.

I’m also disappointed the major US snack manufacturers aren’t being wildly innovative with their flavors. Every week I curse companies for not having the balls to release crazy ass flavors. I look at snacks/fast food in Japan and Europe and think to myself, WTF? Why can’t we have that? Ugh, I’m getting angry.